The May 29th 2024 election delivered a parliament for the first time in the 30 years since 1994 in which no single party had a majority. During the past 30 years the African National Congress (ANC) had a significant majority at both national and provincial level with the exception of the Western Cape province where since 2009 the opposition Democratic Alliance had a majority which was maintained in the 2024 election. Clearly after the 2024 election the ANC which was the largest party with just over 40% of the votes had to seek coalition partners. After tough negotiations a coalition was formed with the Democratic Alliance as the second largest…
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2023 … some reflections on the year that was!
At this time last year I published a similar post reflecting on the happenings of 2022. It is interesting to reflect on what I said then in the light of what has transpired in 2023. In December of 2022, the echoes of COVID-19 still remained, something that has now almost vanished from the public consciousness despite reports of new variants, similar to the amnesia that may follow a very traumatic event. In Britain, however, the country continues to anguish over the consequences of what was and what was not done during the pandemic in the public hearings of a commission of inquiry into the actions of those in positions of…
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Nutrition … a marker of poverty or privilege
A recent headline in the Daily Maverick read as follows, “Child malnutrition in the Eastern Cape qualifies as a disaster” quoting from a South African Human Rights Commission report on child malnutrition in the Eastern Cape province. The article cited the fact that 25% of the provinces’s children have stunted growth and over the period of one year over 1000 children were diagnosed with severe malnutrition of whom 120 died. Juxtapose this with a more recent media headline in a Afrikaans National Sunday Newspaper which reads translated from the Afrikaans, “You cough up R24 000 per head so that Cyril’s (the State President) guests can feast while they fly”. The…
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Thoughts after recent travel outside of South Africa …
I recently had the privilege to travel to Scotland, Austria and Germany and while this post is not directly health related the connection to good governance and government on which effective healthcare delivery depends is clear. In Scotland my wife and I visited my daughter, son-in-law and two grandsons on the croft in the Scottish Highlands that they purchased shortly after their arrival in Scotland over three years ago. In the last 18 months the family have constructed a barn on the property without outside assistance, something that they would have been unlikely to undertake in South Africa. Crofts which are a feature of the Scottish Highlands established in the…